reading

In a little while I am going to participate in a virtual happy hour on Zoom with some of my Maine neighbors. It’s so weird and ironic. Most of them will be within literal shouting distance of each other because their houses/camps are next door. I mean, they could open up their doors/windows and yell at each other, they are that close.

This morning, I grabbed my usual cup of coffee (blueberry flavored with flax milk) and my current read (Wilkie Collins’s 1860s thriller, THE WOMAN IN WHITE), and headed out to my still-sparsely decorated balcony. This is how I start my days, with coffee and books and music. Today I cued up opera arias on YouTube and settled in to the English countryside with Collins’s character, “Walter Hartwright, of Clement’s Inn, Teacher of Drawing.” Listening to the classical music while reading paragraphs like the following sent me into a pleasurable swoon: “I must have been hard to…